Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

NOVELLO, Ivor

(b David Ivor Davies, 15 January 1893, Cardiff, Wales; d 6 March 1951, London, England) Songwriter and actor. His mother was a singing teacher and choral conductor whose father had named her after a famous singer called Clara Novello, who was a daughter of the founder of the publishing house (founded 1811, London); otherwise there was no connection with the publishers. Ivor became rich and famous with a song written in 1914 at his mother's request to an American poem, 'Keep The Home Fires Burning'.

Novello had played the title role in Alfred Hitchcock's silent thriller The Lodger in 1927; he made a talking remake in 1932, but without Hitchcock, and it was a flop. Robert Altman's film Gosford Park (2001) is about an aristocratic house party in England in November 1932; one of the guests is Novello (played by Jeremy Northam), invited for his entertainment value, and one of the guests (played by Maggie Smith) cruelly tells him that none of them will see any of his films. The film is accurate on this point: Novello's film acting career was failing, and he did not know that even greater success lay ahead of him. His musical plays 1935-49, most with lyrics by Christopher Hassall, revived the style of the Viennese operetta and were immensely popular. An annual British songwriting prize is named after him.